A Bed of Roses

'Give us a copper, guv'nor,' moaned the old man.

Farwell took out sixpence and laid it on the seat. 'Now then,' he said, 'you can have this if you'll swear to blow it in drink.'

'I will, s'elp me Gawd,' said the old man eagerly.

Farwell pushed the coin towards him.

'Take it, teetotaller,' he sneered, 'your respectable system of bribery has bought you for sixpence. Now let me see you go into that pub.'

The old man clutched the sixpence and staggered to his feet. Farwell watched the swing doors of the public bar at the end of the passage close behind him. Then he got up and walked away; it was about time to go to Moorgate Street.

As he entered the smoking-room, Victoria blushed. The man moved her, stimulated her. When she saw him she felt like a body meeting a soul. He sat down at his usual place. Victoria brought him his tea, and laid it before him without a word. Nelly, lolling in another corner, kicked the ground, looking away insolently from the elaborate wink of one of the scullions.

'Here, read these,' said Farwell, pushing two of the books across the table. Victoria picked them up.

'Looking Backwards?' she said. 'Oh, I don't want to do that. It's forward I want to go.'

'A laudable sentiment,' sneered Farwell, 'the theory of every Sunday School in the country, and the practice of none. However, you'll find it fairly soul-filling as an unintelligent anticipation. Personally I prefer the other. Demos is good stuff, for Gissing went through the fire.'

Victoria quickly walked away. Farwell looked surprised for a second, then saw the manageress on the stairs.

'Faugh,' he muttered, 'if the world's a stage I'm playing the part of a low intriguer.'

He sipped his tea meditatively. In a few minutes Victoria returned.

'Thank you,' she whispered. 'It's good of you. You're teaching me to live.'

Farwell looked at her critically.

'I don't see much good in that,' he said, 'unless you've got something to live for. One of our philosophers says you live either for experience or the race. I recommend the former to myself, and to you nothing.'

'Why shouldn't I live for anything?' she asked.

'Because life's too dear. And its pleasures are not white but piebald.'

'I understand,' said Victoria, 'but I must live.'

'Je n'en vois pas la nécessité,' quoted Farwell smiling. 'Never mind what that means,' he added, 'I'm only a pessimist.'

The next few weeks seemed to create in Victoria a new personality. Her reading was so carefully selected that every line told. Farwell knew the hundred best books for a working girl; he had a large library composed mostly of battered copies squeezed out of his daily bread. Victoria's was the appetite of a gorgon. In another month she had absorbed Odd Women, An Enemy of the People, The Doll's House, Alton Locke, and a translation of Germinal. Every night she read with an intensity which made her forget that March chilled her to the bone; poring over the book, her eyes a few inches from the candle, she soaked in rebellion. When the cold nipped too close into her she would get up and wrap herself in the horsecloth and read with savage application, rushing to the core of the thought. She was no student, so she would skip a hard word. Besides, in those moods, when the spirit bounds in the body like a caged bird, words are felt, not understood.

Betty was still hovering round her, a gentle presence. She knew what was going on and was frightened. A new Victoria was rising before her, a woman very charming still, but extraordinary, incomprehensible. Often Victoria would snub her savagely, then take her hand as they stood together at the counter bawling for food and drink. And as Victoria grew hard and strong, Betty worshipped her more as she would have worshipped a strong man.

Yet Betty was not happy. Victoria lived now in a state of excitement and hunger for solitude. She took no interest in things that Betty could understand. Their Sunday walks had been ruthlessly cut now and then, for the fury was upon Victoria when eating the fruits of the tree. When they were together now Victoria was preoccupied; she no longer listened to the club gossip, nor did she ask to be told once more the story of Betty's early days.

'Do you know you're sweated?' she said suddenly one day.

Betty's eyes opened round and blue.

'Sweated,' she said. 'I thought only people in the East End were sweated.'

'The world's one big East End,' snapped Victoria.

Betty shivered. Farwell might have said that.

'You're sweated if you get two pounds a week,' continued Victoria. 'You're sweated when you buy a loaf, sweated when you ride in a bus, sweated when they cremate you.'

'I don't understand,' said Betty.

'All profits are sweated,' quoted Victoria from a pamphlet.

'But people must make profits,' protested Betty.

'What for?' asked Victoria.

'How are people to live unless they make profits?' said Betty. 'Aren't our wages profits?'

Victoria was nonplussed for a moment and became involved. 'No, our wages are only wages; profit is the excess over our wages.'

'I don't understand,' said Betty.

'Never mind,' said Victoria, 'I'll ask Mr Farwell; he'll make it clear.'

Betty shot a dark blue glance at her.

'Vic,' she said softly, 'I think Mr Farwell..' Then she changed her mind. 'I can't, I can't,' she thought. She crushed the jealous words down and plunged.

'Vic, darling,' she faltered, 'I'm afraid you're not well. No, and not happy. I've been thinking of something; why shouldn't I leave the Club and come and live with you.'

Victoria looked at her critically for a moment. She thought of her independence, of this affection hovering round her, sweet, dangerously clinging. But Betty's blue eyes were wet.

'You're too good a pal for me, Betty,' she said in a low voice. 'I'd make you miserable.'

'No, no,' cried Betty impulsively. 'I'd love it, Vic dear, and you would go on reading and do what you like. Only let me be with you.'

Victoria's hand tightened on her friend's arm.

'Let me think, Betty dear,' she said.

Ten days later, Betty having won her point, the great move was to take place at seven o'clock. It certainly lacked solemnity. For three days preceding the great change Betty had hurried away from the P.R.R. on the stroke of nine, quickly kissing Victoria and saying she couldn't wait as she must pack. Clearly her wardrobe could not be disposed of in a twinkling. Yet, on moving day, at seven o'clock sharp (the carrier having been thoughtfully commanded to deliver at five) a tin trunk kept together by a rope, a tiny bath muzzled with a curtain, and a hat box loudly advertising somebody's tea, were dumped on the doorstep. The cart drove off leaving the two girls to make terms with a loafer. The latter compromised for fourpence, slammed their door behind him and lurched down the creaking stairs. Betty threw herself into Victoria's arms.

Those first days were sweet. Betty rejoiced like a lover in possession of a long-desired mistress; stripping off her blouse and looking very pretty, showing her white neck and slim arms, she strutted about the attic with a hammer in her hand and her mouth full of nails. It took an evening to hang the curtain which had muzzled the bath; Betty's art treasures, an oleograph of 'Bubbles' and another of 'I'se Biggest,' were cunningly hung by Victoria so that she could not see them on waking up.

Betty was active now as a will o' the wisp. She invented little feasts, expensive Sunday suppers of fried fish and chips, produced a basket of oranges at three a penny; thanks to her there was now milk with the tea. In a moment of enthusiasm Victoria heard her murmur something about keeping a cat. In fact the only thing that marred her life at all was Victoria's absorption in her reading. Often Betty would go to bed and stay awake, watching Victoria at the table, her fingers ravelling her hair, reading with an intentness that frightened her. She would watch Victoria and see her face grow paler, except at the cheeks where a flush would rise. A wild look would come into her eyes. Sometimes she would get up suddenly and, thrusting her hair out of her eyes, walk up and down muttering things Betty could not understand.

One night Betty woke up suddenly, and saw Victoria standing in the moonlight clad only in her nightgown. Words were surging from her lips.

'It's no good… I can't go on… I can't go on until I die or somebody marries me… I won't marry: I won't do it… Why should I sell myself?.. at any rate why should I sell myself cheaply?'

There was a pause. Betty sat up and looked at her friend's wild face.

'What's it all mean after all? I'm only being used. Sucked dry like an orange. By and by they'll throw the peel away. Talk of brotherhood!.. It's war, war.. It's climbing and fighting to get on top.. like crabs in a bucket, like crabs..'

'Vic,' screamed Betty.

Victoria started like a somnambulist aroused and looked at her vaguely.

'Come back to bed at once,' cried Betty with inspired firmness. Victoria obeyed. Betty drew her down beside her under the horsecloth and threw her arms round her; Victoria's body was cold as ice. Suddenly she burst into tears; and Betty, torn as if she saw a strong man weep, wept too. Closely locked in one another's arms they sobbed themselves to sleep.

CHAPTER XXIII

Every day now Victoria's brain grew clearer and her body weaker. A sullen spirit of revolt blended with horrible depression was upon her, but she was getting thinner, paler; dark rings were forming round her eyes. She knew pain now; perpetual weariness, twitchings in the ankles, stabs just above the knee. In horrible listlessness she dragged her weary feet over the tiled floor, responding to commands like the old cab horse which can hardly feel the whip. In this mood, growing churlish, she repulsed Betty, avoided Farwell and tried to seclude herself. She no longer walked Holborn or the Strand where life went by, but sought the mean and silent streets, where none could see her shamble or where none would care.

One night, when she had left at six, she painfully crawled home and up into the attic. At half-past nine the door opened and Betty came in; the room was in darkness, but something oppressed her; she went to the mantlepiece to look for the matches, her fingers trembling. For an eternity she seemed to fumble, the oppression growing; she felt that Victoria was in the room, and could only hope that she was asleep. With a great effort of her will she lit the candle before turning round. Then she gave a short sharp scream.

Victoria was lying across the bed dressed in her bodice and petticoat. She had tucked this up to her knees and taken off her stockings; her legs hung dead white over the edge. At her feet was the tin bath full of water. Betty ran to the bed, choking almost, and clasped her friend round the neck. It was some seconds before she thought of wetting her face. After some minutes Victoria returned to consciousness and opened her eyes; she groaned slightly as Betty lifted up her legs and straightened her on the bed.

It was then that Betty noticed the singular appearance of Victoria's legs. They were covered with a network of veins, some narrow and pale blue in colour, others darker, protruding and swollen; on the left calf one of the veins stood out like a rope. The unaccustomed sight filled her with the horror bred of a mysterious disease. She was delicate, but had never been seriously ill; this sight filled her with physical repulsion. For her the ugliness of it meant foulness. For a moment she almost hated Victoria, but the sight of the tin bath full of water cut her to the heart; it told her that Victoria, maddened by mysterious pain, had tried to assuage it by bathing her legs in the cold water.

Little by little Victoria came round; she smiled at Betty.

'Did I faint, Betty dear?' she asked.

'Yes, dear. Are you better now?'

'Yes, I'm better; it doesn't hurt now.'

Betty could not repress a question.

'Vic,' she said, 'what is it?'

'I don't know,' said Victoria fearfully, then more cheerfully,

'I'm tired I suppose. I shall be all right to-morrow.'

Then Betty refused to let her talk any more, and soon Victoria slept by her side the sleep of exhaustion.

The next morning Victoria insisted upon going to the P. R. R. in spite of Betty suggesting a doctor.

'Can't risk losing my job,' she said laughing. 'Besides it doesn't hurt at all now. Look.'

Victoria lifted up her nightshirt. Her calves were again perfectly white and smooth; the thin network of veins had sunk in again and showed blue under the skin. Alone one vein on the left leg seemed dark and angry. Victoria felt so well, however, that she agreed to meet Farwell at a quarter-past nine. This was their second expedition, and the idea of it was a stimulant. He went with her up to Finsbury Pavement and stopped at a small Italian restaurant.

'Come in here and have some coffee,' he said, 'they have waiters here; that'll be a change.'

Victoria followed him in. They sat at a marble topped table, flooded with light by incandescent gas. In the glare the waiters seemed blacker, smaller and more stunted than by the light of day. Their faces were pallid, with a touch of green: their hair and moustaches were almost blue black. Their energy was that of automata. Victoria looked at them, melting with pity.

'There's a life for you,' said Farwell interpreting her look. 'Sixteen hours' work a day in an atmosphere of stale food. For meals, plate scourings. For sleep and time to get to it, eight hours. For living, the rest of the day.'

'It's awful, awful,' said Victoria. 'They might as well be dead.'

'They will be soon,' said Farwell, 'but what does that matter? There are plenty of waiters. In the shadow of the olive groves to-night in far off Calabria, at the base of the vine-clad hills, couples are walking hand in hand, with passion flashing in their eyes. Brown peasant boys are clasping to their breast young girls with dark hair, white teeth, red lips, hearts that beat and quiver with ecstasy. They tell a tale of love and hope. So we shall not be short of waiters.'

'Why do you sneer at everything, Mr Farwell?' said Victoria. 'Can't you see anything in life to make it worth while?'

'No, I cannot say I do. The pursuit of a living debars me from the enjoyments that make living worth while. But never mind me: I am over without having bloomed. I brought you here to talk of you, not of me.'

'Of me, Mr Farwell?' asked Victoria. 'What do you want to know?'

Farwell leant over the table, toyed with the sugar and helped himself to a piece. Then without looking at her:

'What's the matter with you, Victoria?' he asked.

'Matter with me? What do you mean?' said Victoria, too disturbed to notice the use of her Christian name.

The man scrutinised her carefully. 'You're ill,' he said. 'Don't protest. You're thin; there are purple pockets under your eyes; your underlip is twisted with pain, and you limp.'

Victoria felt a spasm of anger. There was still in her the ghost of vanity. But she looked at Farwell before answering; there was gentleness in his eyes.

'Well,' she said slowly, 'if you must know, perhaps there is something wrong. Pains.'

'Where?' he asked.

'In the legs,' she said after a pause.

'Ah, swellings?'

Victoria bridled a little. This man was laying bare something, tearing at a secret.

'Are you a doctor, Mr Farwell?' she asked coldly.

'That's all right,' he said roughly, 'it doesn't need much learning to know what's the matter with a girl who stands for eleven hours a day. Are the veins of your legs swollen?'

'Yes,' said Victoria with an effort. She was frightened; she forgot to resent this wrenching at the privacy of her body.

'Ah; when do they hurt?'

'At night. They're all right in the morning.'

'You've got varicose veins, Victoria. You must give up your job.'

'I can't,' whispered the girl hoarsely. 'I've got nothing else.'

'Exactly. Either you go on and are a cripple for life or you stop and starve. Yours is a disease of occupation, purely a natural consequence of your work. Perfectly normal, perfectly. It is undesirable to encourage laziness; there are girls starving to-day for lack of work, but it would never do to reduce your hours to eight. It would interfere with the P. R. R. dividends.'

Victoria looked at him without feeling.

'What am I to do?' she asked at length.

'Go to a hospital,' said Farwell. 'These institutions are run by the wealthy who pay two guineas a year ransom for a thousand pounds of profits and get in the bargain a fine sense of civic duty done. No doubt the directors of the P.R.R. contribute most generously.'

'I can't give up my job,' said Victoria dully.

'Perhaps they'll give you a stocking,' said Farwell, 'or sell it you, letting you pay in instalments so that you be not pauperised. This is called training in responsibility, also self-help.'

Victoria got up. She could bear it no longer. Farwell saw her home and made her promise to apply for leave to see the doctor. As the door closed behind her he stood still for some minutes on the doorstep, filling his pipe.

'Well, well,' he said at length, 'the Government might think of that lethal chamber – but no, that would never do, it would deplete the labour market and hamper the commercial development of the Empire.'

He walked away, a crackling little laugh floating behind him. The faint light of a lamp fell on his bowed head and shoulders, making him look like a Titan born a dwarf.

Two days later Victoria went to the Carew. She had never before set foot in a hospital. Such intercourse as she had had with doctors was figured by discreet interviews in dark studies filled with unspeakably ugly and reassuringly solid furniture. Those doctors had patted her hand, said she needed a little change or may be a tonic. At the Carew, fed as it is by the misery of two square miles of North East London, the revelation of pain was dazzling, apocalyptic. The sight of the benches crowded with women and children – some pale as corpses, others flushed with fever, some with faces bandaged or disfigured by sores – almost made her sick. They were packed in serried rows; the children almost all cried persistently, except here and there a baby, who looked with frightful fixity at the glazed roof. From all this chattering crowd of the condemned rose a stench of iodoform, perspiration, unwashed bodies, the acrid smell of poverty.

The little red-haired Scotch doctor dismissed Victoria's case in less than one minute.

'Varicose veins. Always wear a stocking. Here's your form. Settle terms at the truss office. Don't stand on your feet. Oh, what's your occupation?'

'Waitress at the P.R.R., Sir.'

'Ah, hum. You must give it up.'

'I can't, Sir.'

'It's your risk. Come again in a month.'

Victoria pulled up her stockings. Walking in a dream she went to the truss office where a man measured her calves. She felt numb and indifferent as to the exposure of her body. The man looked enquiringly at the left calf.

'V.H. for the left,' he called over his shoulder to the clerk.

At twelve o'clock she was in the P.R.R., revived by the familiar atmosphere. She even rallied one of the old chess players on a stroke of ill-luck. Towards four o'clock her ankles began to twitch.

CHAPTER XXIV

Through all these anxious times, Betty watched over Victoria with the devotion that is born of love. There was in the girl a reserve of maternal sweetness equalled only by the courage she showed every day. Slim and delicate as she seemed, there was in Betty's thin body a strength all nervous but enduring. She did not complain, though driven eleven or twelve hours a day by the eyes of the manageress; those eyes were sharp as a goad, but she went cheerfully.

In a sense Betty was happy. The work did not weigh too heavily upon her; there was so much humility in her that she did not resent the roughness of her companions. Nelly could snub her, trample at times on her like the cart horse she was; the manageress too could freeze her with a look, the kitchen staff disregard her humble requests for teas and procure for her the savage bullying of the customers, yet she remained placid enough.

'It's a hard life,' she once said to Victoria, 'but I suppose it's got to be.' This was her philosophy.

'But don't you want to get out of it?' cried Victoria the militant.

'I don't know,' said Betty. 'I might marry.'

'Marry,' sniffed Victoria. 'You seem to think marriage is the only way out for women.'

'Well, isn't it?' asked Betty. 'What else is there?'

And for the life of her Victoria could not find another occupation for an unskilled girl. Milliners, dressmakers, clerks, typists, were all frightfully underpaid and overworked; true there were women doctors, but who cared to employ them? And teachers, but they earned the wages of virtue: neglect. Besides it was too late; both Victoria and Betty were unskilled, condemned by their sex to low pay and hard work.

'It's frightful, frightful,' cried Victoria. 'The only use we are is to do the dirty work. Men don't char. Of course we may marry, if we can, to any of those gods if they'll share with us their thirty bob a week. Talk of slaves! They're better off than we.'

Betty looked upon all this as rather wild, as a consequence of Victoria's illness. Her view was that it didn't do to complain, and that the only thing to do was to make the best of it. But she loved Victoria, and it was almost a voluptous joy for her to help her friend to undress every night, to tempt her with little offerings of fruit and flowers. When they woke up, Betty would draw her friend into her arms and cover her face with gentle kisses.

But as Victoria grew worse, stiffer, and slower, responding ever more reluctantly to the demands made upon her all day at the P. R. R., Betty was conscious of horrible anxiety. Sometimes her imagination would conjure up a Victoria helpless, wasted, bedridden, and her heart seemed to stop. But her devotion was proof against egoism. Whatever happened, Victoria should not starve if she had to pay the rent and feed herself on nine shillings or so a week until she was well again and beautiful as she had been. Her anxiety increasing, she mustered up courage to interview Farwell, whom she hated jealously. He had ruined Victoria, she thought – made her wild, discontented, rebellious against the incurable. Yet he knew her, and at any rate she must talk about it to somebody. So she mustered up courage to ask him to meet at nine.

'Well?' said Farwell. He did not like Betty much. He included her among the poor creatures, the rubble.

'Oh, Mr Farwell, what's going to happen to Victoria,' cried Betty, with tears in her voice. Then she put her hand against the railings of Finsbury Circus. She had prepared a dignified little speech, and her suffering had burst from her. The indignity of it.

'Happen? The usual thing in these cases. She'll get worse; the veins will burst and she'll be crippled for life.'

Betty looked at him, her eyes blazing with rage.

'How dare you, how dare you?' she growled.

Farwell laughed.

'My dear young lady,' he said smoothly, 'it needs no doctor to tell you what is wanted. Victoria must stop work, lie up, be well fed, live in the country perhaps and her spirits must be raised. To this effect I would suggest a pretty house, flowers, books, some music, say a hundred-guinea grand piano, some pretty pictures. So that she may improve in health it is desirable that she should have servants. These may gain varicose veins by waiting on her, but that is by the way.'

Betty was weeping now. Tear after tear rolled down her cheeks.

'But all this costs money,' continued Farwell, 'and, as you are aware, bread is very dear and flesh and blood very cheap. Humanity finds the extraction of gold a toilsome process, whilst the production of children is a normal recreation which eclipses even the charms of alcohol. There, my child, you have the problem; and there is only one radical solution to it.'

Betty looked at him, intuitively guessing the horrible suggestion.

'The solution,' said Farwell, 'is to complain to the doctor of insomnia, get him to prescribe laudanum and sink your capital in the purchase of half a pint. One's last investment is generally one's best.'